Advice: Keeping Open Bottles

We are all trying to enjoy our wine in moderation so it is useful to find ways to keep an open bottle of wine for drinking later.

If you don't finish the bottle in a single sitting, it will oxidise if left for more than a day or so.

Here at the Alpine Wines house we leave wines to sit around after opening to test their quality - it's part of my requirements that our wines remain nice to drink after a day.

As we often open more than we can drink, we sometimes keep them for quite a bit longer and we are regularly surprised how well some wines can keep, especially if you store them in a cool space.

Already oxidised wines like Vin Jaune can be kept for a couple of weeks without worry but many others fade in half a day so it is a gamble we don't particularly recommend.

There are devices which extract oxygen from partially consumed bottles like the famous Vacuvin. These only help a little if you keep the wine very cool. The vaccuum is very imperfect so you are only gaining a couple hours and it can affect the aromatics too.

If like me, you don't drink a full bottle in one sitting and might not want to drink the same wine again at the next meal, or if, as we do, you open different bottles to go with different courses but don't want to waste them, the best thing we have found is inert gas - gas heavier than oxygen which creates an insulating layer. We use Private Preserve and a canister of it lasts a good long while. It allows us to keep the opened bottles after a tasting event and enjoy them over the following week.